Krisp Technologies Inc., a developer of software for noise cancellation, transcription and summarization of live meetings, today is introducing AI Accent Conversion, an artificial intelligence-based technology that makes heavily accented speech more understandable to English speakers.

The company, whose service is compatible with most popular conferencing platforms, says it transcribes more than 50 million calls and processes more than 75 billion minutes of voice conversations every month, The desktop application acts as a virtual microphone, modifying the speaker’s voice with 200 milliseconds of processing latency, or about the time it takes to blink your eyes once.

Krisp said AI Accent Conversion preserves the speaker’s original voice, converting only the phonemes of speech to match native American English pronunciation. Emotions, tone and natural speech patterns intact. The company holds two patents on the technology.

Initial tests with business-to-business customers showed that using accent conversion increased a company’s Net Promoter Score from 7.23 to 8.29, pushed sales conversion rates up 26% and grew revenue per booking by nearly 15%.

Krisp President and Co-founder Arto Minasyan, who is Armenian, said the technology addresses a problem he has experienced personally. Even small misunderstandings can slow down decisions, require repetition and reduce meeting efficiency. “While improving an accent is possible, it takes years of practice and is incredibly difficult for busy professionals,” he said in a prepared statement.

AI Accent Conversion will initially support Indian English accents but will expand to support Filipino, South American Spanish and others, the company said. The feature will be integrated into Krisp’s AI Meeting Assistant, which provides noise cancellation, transcripts and summaries, multiple languages, video recordings, action items and meeting outlines. The software works directly on supported devices without sharing data externally. A demo video is available here.

It will initially be available under a free plan with up to 90 minutes of usage per day and a $15 per month business plan with unlimited usage.

Image: Krisp